After Hector Martin, the kernel developer overseeing the Asahi Linux project, parted ways due to a disagreement with Linus Torvalds over Rust language code in the kernel, another developer, Karol Herbst, also resigned. Herbst was responsible for the Nouveau project, reverse engineering NVIDIA GPU drivers for the Linux kernel (after NVIDIA partially open-sourced their GPU drivers, older GPUs still rely on Nouveau). Presently, Herbst is an employee at Red Hat, contributing to other open-source projects like Mesa and Rustic OpenCL drivers. Herbst announced his resignation from maintaining Nouveau drivers in the kernel, citing a clear rationale that he no longer wants to engage with the Linux kernel developer community.
The point of strong contention for Herbst stemmed from a statement by Theodore Ts’o, a kernel developer, who wrote, “we are the thin blue line,” indicating a responsibility to maintain order and high quality code (thin blue line is an idiom referring to police officers who maintain societal order, with the blue color representing their uniform in several countries). Herbst viewed this statement as conflicting with his personal beliefs, where developers should respect each other, treat each other equally, and not use their power to suppress others. Being in a development community with such beliefs drained him of motivation and enjoyment in his work, leading to his decision to step down as the maintainer of Nouveau drivers.
Source: Phoronix
TLDR: Hector Martin and Karol Herbst resigned from kernel development projects due to disagreements, with Herbst citing conflicting beliefs with the community as the reason for leaving.
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